Sitting in the auto rickshaw that stopped at one of the traffic signals, I gazed down the dark road as evening fell. My eyes lay on this elderly woman, in faded salwar-kameez, her grey hair tied in a bun, rushing towards a bus. Before she could pull up her weight to the rear pedestal of the overcrowded bus, the bus picked up speed. Perhaps, her aching limbs and weak muscles refused to work with her mind; she slipped and fell on the road. Her cloth bag lay at a distance. The bus mercilessly sped away.
Empathizing with the old woman, I was annoyed at the indifferent attitude of people around her. Most people at the bus stop, who witnessed the whole episode, did not even move a limb. Just a few took the pain to turn their heads to see what happened.
This was one of the times when I wanted my brain to brush aside the long list of do's and don't, my parents told me when I came to stay in this new city. It reflected the apathetic mind-set of the urban middle class. I asked the driver to stop the auto and offered the old woman a lift. Without much vacillation, she slipped in beside me.
She gave me a look in which I could read gratitude but could understand very little of what she said in Tamil interspersed with broken English. "Even if the elderly fall and collapse in a city, there will be no one to help them get up these days," she said.
Sitting in the auto with that woman, I gazed spitefully at Chennai. The vivid buildings shone bright in the crimson sunset light and I thought the larger and more colourful a city is, the more places there are to hide ones guilt, the more crowded it is, the more people there are to hide behind.
Her house was about ten minutes from the bus stop. She got down and with a smile on her face, held her trembling hand on my head and blessed me.
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